Party Hats and Space Binders
by shewhoridesonrainbows
Summary: Dani asks a question that has been dancing around in the back of her head, "Why am I a girl?" Or: I was given a prompt by an anon on tumblr and was inspired enough to write over 3000 words.


_A/N: I would like to thank Soluscrow on tumblr for beta reading and answering any questions I had about being trans. A thank you to scribble-through-the-night of tumblr, too, for betaing for me. I'd also like to thank the anon that sent the prompt to me, I wrote more in the last 3 days for this than I have for anything else in the last year._

Danny's room was unusually loud on one stormy day. Dark, thunderous clouds had driven the party of teenagers indoors and all outside plans for the day were abandoned in favor of the warm, dry room. They could feel the piñata, left hanging from the tree out back, sending dirty looks up at them.

The birthday girl, Dani-with-an-'I', still had on a, slightly droopy, party hat as she totally creamed Danny at the video game he'd given her just earlier. Sam and Tucker were switching between cheering for her and rooting for him. Jazz was handing out towels, trying (and failing) to keep his bedspread from getting soaked. Dani was cackling with glee.

"This is the best birthday party ever!" she exclaimed after killing Danny's character, again. She turned and grinned down at him. He'd dropped his controller and flopped backwards on the floor, groaning the whole way down.

He barely turned his head to look at her, "This is only your second one, how would you know?" He propped himself up with his elbows and smiled back.

"Yeah," Tucker chimed in from his perch on the bed with a towel draped over his neck. He'd spread his precious electronics out in front of him, checking them over for any possible water damage. He looked down at them as he continued, "It's only been two years since you were..." He trailed off, not wanting to say the "C" word. The older teens around him also tensed a little bit; Jazz even stopped her insistent mother-henning.

"Since I was cloned. Yeah, I know," Dani finished for him with a roll of her eyes. Danny relaxed after seeing how nonchalant his cousin was being. "I'm the same age Danny was when we all met."

Dani froze, her eyes going distant and her eyebrows coming together. It was obvious she was thinking about something important. Danny sat all the way up and waited.

After a long, silent pause, Dani snapped her head up and looked curiously at Danny.

"Danny, why was I-" she stopped. Whatever question she had was plaguing her mind but she didn't know how to go about asking it. She glanced around at the older teens staring at her. Danny noticed her swallow before she started again.

"Danny, if I'm your clone, why am I a girl?" Everyone stiffened again. She took a breath and hurriedly continued. "I mean, all the other clones were guys, the only difference is that I was younger than them. What made _me_ different?"

Danny's room was silent. Sam and Tucker looked nervously at Danny and Jazz stood next to them, all three waiting to see how Danny would react. Even the weather outside had gone quiet, like the clouds were waiting to see if there would be a storm indoors as well.

His loud exhale broke the silence around Danny. His right hand went up to rub the back of his neck while his left idly toyed with a thumbstick of the controller in front of him. Dani looked like she was ready to bolt. Another beat went by before someone spoke.

"Do you want us to leave?" Jazz asked, Sam and Tucker both nodded as if to say they would go the moment he asked. Danny was about to tell them to stay when an idea came.

He turned fully towards his sister and answered, "Actually, Jazz, can you go get the _family_ photo album?" Out of the corner of his eye, Danny saw his younger cousin's nervous expression change to one of confusion at the emphasis on the word family. His sister smiled comfortingly before walking out of the room, her shoes still wet and squeaking on the hardwood flooring. The pair on the bed were still a bit tense but they knew Danny wasn't upset now so they relaxed. Dani still looked perplexed.

The room was quiet and so was the sky as they waited.

Danny decided he was going to start this the easiest way he could: "Do you know what transgender means?" She nodded.

"It's when someone used to be one gender but is now another, right?" A dim light shown in Dani's eyes, like she almost had an idea of the answer to her own question but she wasn't quite there.

"Eeeeh," Danny made a so-so gesture with his hand, "not really... well not most of the time." Jazz's hurried, slightly squeaky, footsteps made their way back to the room. "For a lot, it's that we were told over and over that we were one thing," he paused and the light in Dani's eyes turned all the way on. _Ah, now she knows._ Danny looked up as Jazz entered, grabbing the beat up book from her as he kept explaining. "But we never feel right with that label.

"This is full of pictures that only close friends and family have seen." He fingered the frayed edges and took a breath in preparation before slowly cracking it open to the first page. There, in his mother's elegant script, reads "Fenton Family Photos" with a group shot of the four. He angled the book so Dani could see the picture.

There was a, much younger, Jack and Maddie Fenton, each holding a child. Jack had the elementary-age, Jazz, lifted into frame, her long, bright hair pulled back by a headband already. Maddie had a toddler sitting on her hip, shorter, black hair up into a ponytail and topped with a bow. Both children wore matching dresses, that only one looked comfortable in.

Danny watched his younger cousin take in everything she could about the photo in front of her, he could also feel the other three occupants of the room looking over his shoulders. He cocked his head towards them and raised an eyebrow to which they ducked their heads.

"Sorry, we don't get to see your family pictures very often," Sam apologized.

"Yeah, and now we know that your parents _did_ wear hazmat suits all the time!" Tucker added, pointing towards the orange horror that Jack wore. Danny chuckled and turned his attention back to Dani as she looked up from the page.

Her finger pointed towards the grumpy black haired toddler as she asked, "So that was you?" Danny nodded and searched Dani's face for any signs of a negative reaction. Seeing none, his gaze went to the book in his lap. Even though it was 13 years ago, the dress started to make his skin itch so he skipped ahead in the book to a more recent page.

The page had photos from about four and five years before. The black haired child in all of these looked a bit more comfortable in baggy, knee-length shorts and oversized hoodies. In every, single one, long hair was tied back into a ponytail at the nape of the neck. No bows.

Dani gasped beside him and she scrambled towards her discarded jacket. She took out her phone and started swiping through the gallery until she found what she was looking for. She held her phone close to the book to compare.

The picture on her phone was a year and a half old. It showed Dani and Danny posing at his birthday party. Dani on the phone and Danny in the book looked almost identical. It made Danny's itchy skin worse.

"Wow! We looked the same!" Dani all but shouted and Danny must have squirmed a tiny bit - but enough for Jazz's sharp eyes - because his sister stepped forward. _Big sis to the rescue._

She held her hand out for the book and declared, in a tone that shut down any argument, "Okay, no more pictures!" As soon as she had the album securely in her grasp, she held it to her chest and crossed her arms over it, a steel cage keeping the book from being opened again any time soon. Dani locked her phone and put it away, noticing that Danny had wiggled away from her a little bit.

"I'm sorry, Danny," she apologized. "Are you ok?"

He could feel four pairs of eyes on him as he closed his and took a calming breath. His hand came up and rubbed the back of his neck again. _No ponytail. It's alright, you're past that,_ he told himself. He opened his eyes and smiled reassuringly, "Yeah, just not gonna bring out the photo album for a while."

Danny looked around the room and unwound a bit more when he saw the love and acceptance in his friends' faces. He smiled back at them then turned back towards Dani.

"So, yeah," he started, "as you saw, the 12 year old you and the 12 year old me had _things_ in common. Which is probably why you turned out the way you did when Vlad...made you?" The last two words were turned up, Danny wasn't sure exactly what went into the cloning process but that seemed right. There was a beat of silence as Dani took in everything she was told.

Danny saw movement out of the corner of his eye so he turned and watched Jazz motion at his friends to move to the floor. After a bit of shuffling, the teenagers were arranged in a circle with Danny and Dani sitting across from each other. Danny cleared his throat.

"Now that we're past all that," he made a vague gesture with a hand, "is there anything else you wanna ask?"

Dani's expression changed multiple times, from surprise to delight, then through unsure towards thoughtful. It was wild to watch so Danny could only wonder how it would feel to be happening in her head. Sam and Tuck laughed a little at the sight before them.

Danny's room was filled with soft laughter and the light pitter patter of sprinkling rain on his window, the storm sounded like it was blowing over. The sudden sound of Dani's fist hitting open palm announced that she'd finally come up with something to ask and everyone's attention zeroed back on her.

"Who all knows?" Danny could tell this wasn't her only question, just the first.

He thought for a second and basically did a roll call of everybody he'd come out to.

"Well, first I told Tuck, since he was my best bud. We were in sixth grade and he helped me search online for what I was feeling. We both found out about LGBT stuff together." Danny could see Tucker sitting up straighter from his peripherals, proud to be the first to know.

"Then Jazz figured it out because she'd started reading all these psychology books and stuff," Danny turned towards his sister at that, knowing she'd want to go into detail. She waited until he nodded before starting.

"There was a specific article by a trans-male doctor that made me decide to ask Danny myself. He described what his childhood was like and how he felt. A lot of what he wrote reminded me of what I saw in Danny. So, I sat him down and asked him."

"What she means is that she cornered me after a shower and blurted out 'Are you a boy?'," Danny corrected, laughing as Jazz sputtered a denial. Her cheeks were flushed as her eyes darted around the group. Sam and Tucker were wheezing, Tuck's hand was on her shoulder for stability. Danny was trying his best to not to join them in fits. Dani looked like she wanted to laugh too but wasn't sure if she could.

"Well, I, what I mean is," she paused to breathe, her face flaming, "I didn't mean to catch you right after you showered."

Danny waved his hand, "I'm over it now." He looked back at his cousin, still grinning.

"Next were Mom and Dad"

"How did they take it?" Dani asked nervously.

"A lot better than the horror stories I read online about other people's outings." He smiled fondly as he replayed that day's events.

"It was the summer before seventh grade and I knew I couldn't handle another year of being called the wrong gender, of being addressed by the wrong name. But I knew I had to tell Mom and Dad if I wanted my school records changed.

"So, with my hoodie pocket full of copies of the articles Jazz had read," siblings nodded and smiled at each other, "I called a family meeting. I wasn't sure how to start and I ended up mumbling 'I'm a boy' a couple times before I had Jazz help me.

"I almost cried when Dad first called me 'Danny-boy' and 'Son' right after I came out," Danny chuckled and wiped at his watering eyes. "Hell, I _did_ cry when both of them hugged me and told me they love me and stuff."

There wasn't a dry eye in the room as he went on, "Mom took me out to go school clothes shopping and didn't hesitate before going to the boys' section, even though we hadn't cut my hair yet 'cus she didn't want my school pictures to be me with a crappy, kitchen-scissor cut. Oh," Danny pointed towards the photo album left on the bed, "speaking of pictures, Mom emptied every frame in the house and stuffed them all in that book after she saw that I refused to look at them hanging in the hallway."

Dani glanced towards the book then asked, "So they took it pretty well?"

With a shrug and a nod Danny said, "There were still bumps along the road because they were used to using one pronoun for both their kids and 12 years of habit is harder to break than flipping a switch. But they were never upset about it, I actually think Dad was overjoyed to be able to have father-son experiences."

"Bet he can't wait until you start hormone therapy so he can teach you how to shave," Tucker chimed in. "Mine sat me down with shaving cream and a razor the minute a single hair sprouted."

Sam snorted, "What hair, Foley? You're still as smooth-skinned as the day I met you two." Tucker childishly stuck his tongue out and Sam did it right back, Danny shaking his head at his friends' antics.

"Ooo oo," Dani bounced in her spot and flapped a hand towards Sam. "How did Sam find out?" The nervousness and awkwardness had disappeared from the young girl, replaced with excitement at hearing the rest of the stories.

Danny rubbed the back of his neck then answered, "Well, Tuck and I met Sam our eighth grade year and I had been lucky, until that point, that I hadn't inherited Mom's..." he trailed off and kind of gestured towards his chest. He seemed to have found the right words and continued, "Mom's _physical features_ earlier, but my 13 year old body decided to betray me because they just _popped_ that year. I was uncomfortable wearing a bra but uncomfortable without something holding them in place so I read up online on ways for guys to bind if they couldn't get a hold of an actual binder.

"So there Tuck and I were, right in the middle of the sports bra section, trying not to seem like pervy middle schoolers, when up walks someone wearing more black and purple than I'd ever seen on one person." Everyone grinned at Sam, who smiled with a 'Thanks, I try' before waving for Danny to get on with the story. "Sam took one look at me, clutching onto a couple of sports bras while Tucker was reaching for a smaller size higher up, and said, 'If you're here to be weird I'm going to ignore you but if you need help I've got 10 minutes away from my parents.'

"She helped me pick out the ones that wouldn't show through my shirts, offered to ring them up and everything, and, when she handed me the bag outside, she warned me about binding for too long then walked off."

Dani whipped her head at Sam, scrunching her eyebrows. "Why'd you say that? How'd you know?" she wondered. Sam glance towards Danny, asking if she could interrupt his stories with one of her own. Danny gestured for Sam to go ahead, knowing that everyone wanted in on what had happened from her side. She sat forward and cleared her throat.

"A little back story first," she began, "My parents had just moved us from a bigger city, with a bigger school, with a bigger queer population. Kids that felt 'other' had ended up grouping together so almost everyone in my friend group came out at one point or another; my best friend was the first. He was always straightforward with what he wanted so he walked up to us one day at school, told us he was a guy and to call him Kevin, then explained what he'd learned from his Aunt Emma and her wife.

"After that, everyone started feeling more comfortable with themselves and found terms that fit them. I figured out I was ace then started mixing purple into my wardrobe when I saw the asexual pride flag. My parents were even less accepting of that revelation." Sam shrugged away everyone's sympathetic expressions, "Nothing new with them. Granny, on the other hand, was just glad that I was happy."

Sam had a soft look in her eyes when she thought about how great her grandma was. She shook her head and the sassy, determined girl was back.

"Anyways, back on subject," she held up a hand and ticked off a summary, "best friend was trans, we all learned about being queer together, and I knew some of the signs of a trans boy looking for sports bras to bind with." She held up the three fingers and wiggled them at the group of teens. "So, when I saw Danny's 'features' showing a little through his sweatshirt combined with the terrified and uncomfortable look on his face, I had a pretty big hunch. I hoped I was right and helped them.

"The next time I saw the two dorks was in the hallway at school. I walked up, introduced myself properly, and explained everything about myself and Kevin. We've been hanging out together since." Sam finished with a self-satisfied smile, glad to be done so that Danny could get on with the rest of his stories. Tucker spoke up before Danny could, though.

"Yep, and not even a year later, you talked Danny into turning on the portal and added 'half ghost' to his list of descriptors," Tucker snorted. Another round of sticking their tongues out at each other started between Sam and Tuck at the comment.

"Hey, hey!" Dani waved her hands at the two to get everyone's attention. When she had it she went on, "I really want to know the rest. Like, does anyone else know? What about kids you grew up with?"

She took a breathe to go on but Danny interrupted, "The only people that I know know are Dash and Vlad. Dash and I were friends as toddlers so he knew me from before. Vlad found out because we were spending the night at his mansion and I'd sensed ghosts. So I'd transformed in the middle of the night to fight off these vultures, ended up fighting Vlad, and passed out afterwards." Danny took one look at the quizzical expression on his cousin's face and elaborated. "You're not supposed to bind your chest when you go to sleep. So, when I was human again, I wasn't, y'know, flat anymore." He closed his mouth and waited because Dani looked ready to pounce with her next question.

"And how did he react?"

Danny stood and walked to his dresser and he could feel eyes following him as he went. With his back turned to the rest, he opened one of the smaller top drawers. "He got me my first, real, binder," he said and pulled out a handful of fabric. He separated three binders in his hands and spread one out to show Dani. It went halfway down his torso and was covered in stars. Looking closely, he could make out the real life constellations. He smiled down at the undergarment then looked back up at the group.

"This isn't actually the first one he gave me," he said, setting the other two back in the drawer behind him. "But Vlad gets me one with this exact pattern every year. He knows how much I love space and that I want to be an astronaut so he pays a company quite a bit to print an accurate depiction of the night sky on a binder for my birthday."

"Wait," Dani raised a hand to stop Danny, "you're telling me that Vlad, _Vlad Plasmius_ , bought you an expensive, custom binder?"

"Yep," he popped the 'p'. "At first, I think, it was him trying to get me to see him as a father figure but after he got his head out of his ass about my dad, he started signing the cards with 'Uncle Vlad'."

His cousin looked deep in thought so Danny focused his senses elsewhere. When he couldn't hear anything outside, he looked out his window to see clouds dissipating. Sunlight was barely starting to peek through. A beam landed across Dani's face and she opened her mouth to ask a final question.

"I think understand most of this, but why am I not, you know, trans too?" She looked into his eyes like they held the answers to everything.

"Probably because we aren't the same _people_ ," Danny emphasized. "Just because Vlad cloned you from me doesn't erase the fact that you're _you_ and I'm _me_. You're your own person, Dani, with your own personality, and," he raised one shoulder in a half shrug, "your own gender identity."

The two black haired teens on the floor smiled warmly at each other in silence, tears misting their eyes, until they were swarmed by Sam, Tuck, and Jazz. Everybody ended up a laughing pile on the floor. There may have been more tears.

After de-tangling limbs, they all moved back to their original positions from before the heart to hearts began. Danny sat right next to Dani and nudged her with an elbow. When she looked back at him he picked up her forgotten controller and held it out towards her.

"Wanna go another round?" he grinned. She smirked right back and grabbed it.

"Sure," she started as she turned the controller back on, "I'm ready to kick your scrawny ass again." Tuck and Sam, the traitors, immediately started cheering for her while Jazz collected damp towels.

Danny's room was bright, with both sunshine and happiness. _Dani may have been right,_ he thought as he mashed buttons _, this is a pretty great birthday party._


End file.
